


The Stuff That Souls Are Made Of

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x19, Anxiety, Canary Cry, Episode Related, F/M, Grief, Major character death discussed, Missing Scene Fic, Panic Attacks, There is a Wuthering Heights reference which may or may not make you cry, episode reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 10:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6851776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity blinked up at him, keeping her voice quiet as she asked, “Are you better now?”</p>
<p>She knew it was a fairly unfair question; of course he wasn’t better. Not really. None of them were, given what had happened, and what they had been doing that very morning. </p>
<p>Episode reaction/missing scene fic for 4x19 “Canary Cry”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stuff That Souls Are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings in the tags as I wouldn't want anybody to be made uncomfortable by the subject of this particular story.

“Stop the car!”

Felicity threw an arm out to steady herself as she leaped forward in her seat, startling the driver as he took them away from the cemetery where they’d given Laurel their last goodbyes. The car rolled to a jolting stop just past the entrance gates; she could, out the right-hand corner of the window, still see the bright green of the grass and the jutting stones of the graves pushing upwards, reaching towards the sky. 

“Sorry! Sorry, I just - one moment, please -” she garbled, a tear still clinging to her chin defiantly. Her throat was wet with them above her dress, making the skin glow dully in the mid-morning cloudy sun. But she didn’t care about that right now. “It’s _important.”_

_My ex-fiance is having a panic attack and_ _I need to help him._

She saw the suppressed emotion at the service. She heard, in the inflections and cadence of his voice while he gave the eulogy, how much he was struggling to hold it together. 

He had been resolute, just five minutes earlier, when he had told her that he already knew what she had been going to ask of him - _will you kill Damien Darhk?_

But Felicity, as she always had, saw the fragility underneath, the cracks forming in the stone of his tough exterior. Oliver was strong, yes, but even diamonds would shatter with the right amount of pressure. 

They were shattering now. 

“ _Felicity_ ,” Oliver’s breathless wheeze of her name made her head jerk round, like a whip cracking through the air; he couldn’t say anything else, didn’t seem to be able to, but the look on his face and in his eyes - they were wide and round and very _blue,_ the rest of him was pale as chalk - said, _Help me._

She hastened to unbuckle her seatbelt, throwing the unbuckled end aside as she climbed over the leather seats, her rush to get to him overtaking everything else, even her own grief at Laurel’s death - her anger, her regret - and the fact that they weren’t even  _together_  anymore. 

Oliver gave a moan, low in his throat, and Felicity was squeezing herself into the space between his feet and the passenger seat in front of him before she could change her mind. 

“Hey, hey,” she soothed, grasping his shaking hands in both of hers. The tiny, infinitesimal tremors seemed to vibrate through her, right down into her blood, though to anyone else they were probably so small as to be undetectable. Not to her, though.

Oliver made the same sound again, the sound of a distressed animal trapped in a cage, and it catapulted her back in time to those first few nights and weeks on the road, when the disorientation of a new environment was enough to send him spiraling, nightmares meaning that he refused sleep, and barely spoke during daylight hours. It was terrifying to witness; not because she was afraid of _him_ \- it had never been that - but because there had been little she could do, in the beginning at least, to help. 

She’d stayed awake all night with him, once, in Coast City, because she hadn’t wanted to be selfish, and sleep soundly while he suffered. 

“Look at me,” she commanded, sniffing as a stray tear slipped past her cheek and down her throat; she was too distracted to wipe it away. “Oliver, look at me.”

He shook his head, his breathing dangerously shallow, though his chest heaved with each inhale; the fight between his lungs’ desperate bid for air and the paralysis, fueled by panic, that prevented them from receiving oxygen turning his skin grey. 

“Oliver,” she said firmly, but keeping her voice soft, “if you don’t breathe, you’ll pass out. If you do, you’ll have to go to the hospital, and I know you how much you hate going there.” She gave a tiny smile; an attempt at humour through the fresh tears that threatened to pour down her already sticky, tear-stained face. “So please, try. Just for me. Okay?”

Eventually, Oliver gave a tiny nod, gripping her hands hard; it should have hurt, but it didn’t. 

“Laurel’s dead,” Felicity continued. “And it hurts. I know. And I may have been distant with you since, well, y’know...we stopped being together. Maybe I shouldn’t have focused on being angry and upset and - I don’t know, bitter, I guess?” She shrugged, blinking furiously, wetness clinging to her eyelashes. “The point is, I should have done something when I saw you having a hard time but I didn’t because I was holding a grudge, but...things are different now. I want to be there for you more. I....” 

_Still love you. I still love you._

“...care about you, a _lot_. Like really a lot. More than I care about the Internet.”

“Okay, I know _that’s_  not true,” Oliver interrupted suddenly, his voice low and hoarse but still audible in the complete silence of the car. 

Felicity was so surprised that she gave a startled little giggle; it made, in turn, the corners of Oliver’s mouth twitch up slightly. Some of the colour was returning to his face, though he was still making rather a lot of effort to take in oxygen. 

But at least he wasn’t gasping for air or crying out like a wounded animal anymore, and given the circumstances, that was an important distinction. 

Felicity blinked up at him, keeping her voice quiet as she asked, “Are you better now?”

She knew it was a fairly _un_ fair question; of course he wasn’t _better_. Not really. None of them were, given what had happened, and what they had been doing that very morning. 

“Yes,” he said, prim and polite. Not the way he usually spoke to her. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she replied, echoing his own response when he had saved her from Brie Larvan and she had thanked him afterwards. 

“I do,” he said. “I _do_.” He cleared his throat, then slowly let go of her hands. Her nails had left little crescent moons in his fingers where she’d gripped them so tightly. “I - I think I’m okay now.”

That was her dismissal.   

She raised herself up onto her knees, using Oliver’s shoulder as leverage to haul herself up. The carpet had left indentations in her knees. 

Before she could think about what she was doing, or why she was doing it, she pressed a swift kiss to the side of his forehead, her lips soft and fleeting on his skin.

She pulled away and scrambled back into her own seat before he had even had a chance to react, and she hoped that the frantic beat of her heart wasn’t audible outside her chest. 

Whatever happened, his pain would always be tied to hers. It wouldn’t matter what it was; whatever he felt, she would be bound to feel it too, like an echo in her own heart and a tattoo on her own skin. 

What was that quote from _Wuthering Heights?_  

_Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same._

She hadn’t put much stock in the love between Cathy and Heathcliff - she’d found the whole thing rather alarming, actually, reading it at sixteen, because it was the kind of book you read when you were sixteen - but maybe Emily Bronte had got one thing right. 

Oliver’s soul and hers were matched. 

_Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same._

__His and mine are the same._   
_

The driver started the engine once more, and they started to drive away, down the street, and out of sight. 


End file.
